Black Warrior Review reads general fiction, nonfiction, and poetry submissions from December 1 – March 1 and June 1 – September 1.

Submissions are accepted only through Submittable at bwr.submittable.com/submit. All mailed submissions will be recycled unread, and unsolicited email submissions will not be considered. There is a $3 submission fee.

BWR pays a one-year subscription and a nominal lump-sum fee for all works published.

Rights revert to author upon publication; please credit Black Warrior Review with first publication if the work is republished elsewhere.

The average response time for submissions is between 1 and 6 months. If you have not received a response after 6 months, please check on the status of your submission in Submittable. If you encounter any problems, email us at interns.bwr@gmail.com.

Please wait one month after receiving a response to submit again.

We do not consider previously published work.

Simultaneous submissions are welcome. Please tell us if it is a simultaneous submission, and notify us immediately if the work is accepted elsewhere.

Please do not mix genres in the same submission.

Past contributors and contest winners, please wait three years from the date of your publication to resubmit work.

Students, faculty, staff, and administrators currently or formerly (within four years) affiliated with the University of Alabama are ineligible for consideration or publication.

FICTION

We seek risk-taking prose that challenges conventions of narrative, language, form, and genre. We value speculation, invention and imagination, work that pushes against the real, dismantles the world and builds it better. Give us your futuristic stories, your rebuilding of the world, your radical envisionings. The weird, the lyrical, the magical. Make us rethink. Make us feel.

We especially seek work from writers of color, queer and trans writers, disabled writers, immigrant writers, and other groups whose voices have been long silenced.

We ask that prose works are no longer than 7,000 words. We also accept flash fiction (under 1,000 words); please include no more than three flash pieces in a single submission.

NONFICTION

We seek nonfiction that blends and breaks down borders. We want the unexpected and all the many forms that nonfiction can exist within. Nonfiction, in our eyes, isn’t just limited to prose, so surprise us with your lineated essays, your erasures, and your experimentations. We appreciate the elliptical and that which suspends, often above the straightforward. We value work that pushes language beyond its standardized forms; work that plays with grammar, syntax, and voice; work that recognizes English as a language of multiplicities. Send us your best and bravest.

We ask that nonfiction works are no longer than 7000 words. Please query for longer works. We do not usually accept academic articles.

POETRY

We seek the insatiable, poems that want and want — toothy, demure, restless creatures unafraid to craft their own, untamed worlds impossible not to fall into. Give us poems that prowl in joy and protest, raucous and willful. We value hybridity, the weird, the grotesque, the sensual. We value voice. Surprise us.

Please send up to five poems, with a maximum submission length of 10 pages. Poems should be submitted in one document, with the titles separated by commas in the “Submission Title” field. You may abbreviate the titles if they do not fit.

GRAPHIC WRITING, COMICS, & ART

Although we usually solicit one featured artist per issue, we do welcome submissions of striking visual narratives (think: graphic novel or memoir in short form). We are looking to publish one or two graphic essays/stories/poems, or pieces of sequential art per issue.

We publish graphic writing in grayscale. Submit in .jpg, .tiff, or .pdf format.